I would agree that this is easy, but I did run into a weird edge case.
First to be clear, I would never comment on anybody's body or clothes, especially not in the workplace. This is not to comply with some rule, I wouldn't have the urge to do that in the first place. It's weird and unneeded.
Anyway, the edge case. My female coworker is very passionate about making custom dresses. One day, on the day before our country's Queen's Day, she comes to work in an absolute master piece of a custom dress, dedicated to the festivities to come. The quality of that dress, the attention to detail, was out of this world. All custom made.
She walks over to a group of devs (five men, one is me) and basically presents the dress, yet without saying a word.
And now comes the awful thing. By chance, all of us had one of those mandatory "ethical workplace" trainings the day before. And this literal example, some guy commenting on a dress was used as an example of an absolute no-go.
Which sounds reasonable to me, in every context but this one. I had a strong urge to compliment her on her skill and the incredible result of her tireless effort. Surely, she worked on this forever, and this was to be a proud moment of display.
But we all kept our mouth shut, and picked the safe side of things. She left defeated, perhaps humiliated.
I know, it's a very uncommon situation, but the dynamic is interesting. In the gray zone area, most people would prefer to better be safe than sorry. Which almost every time is best anyway, but not this time.
I'll end with an aspect much more common. Feedback, as in professional feedback. Recently a study showed that VCs are far less critical towards female founders compared to male ones. Males would get very direct, sometimes harsh, and detailed negative feedback, whilst women would get the far less usable vague sugar-coated version of it.
Supposedly, out of fear. It shows hyper tensions, paranoia. If that gets out of hand, women and other minorities will be treated as radio-active objects, which is in nobody's interest.
The way I see it, really bad men (subject of article), cause this distrustful relation between perfectly good people.
>But we all kept our mouth shut, and picked the safe side of things. She left defeated, perhaps humiliated.
Anti-sexual harassment training, and more broadly the discouraging of socialization between men and women, has also reduced the opportunity for men and women to marry. The flip side of the male executive no longer being able to chase his secretary around a desk to try to pinch her on the butt is another executive not being able to politely court the secretary he is in love with (and vice versa).
I don't have a good answer for how to get the one without the other, but both are consequences of modern sensibilities.
There's different takes on this. To me, the workplace is free of romance or any sexual advance of any kind from my part.
I would never go beyond minor superficial personal interest (how was your holiday) at the coffee machine, and it ends there. Even if interest was shown in me, I'd deflect. Not going to happen.
That said, I do agree with the larger overall point that in today's digital and more sensitive world (don't have a better word), it likely is harder for people to connect that way.
I think one of the main tenants of allyship (I'm comfortable having weirdos call me "woke" for using the word allyship) is being accepting when told you did something wrong, and working to cultivate relationships in which a person is able to _simply_ say "I didn't like that", to which that feedback is taken seriously and responsibly.
I mostly think the argument "Well men will just start treating women and minorities will start being treated like radio active objects" is cultivated and pushed forward by men that aren't willing to hear they did something wrong. Binary thinking is _the problem_. If you make a comment with good intent, but it was taken poorly, the fear is you'll be labeled as a bad person/sexist/whatever. In reality, if your intent is good, and your response to being told you did something wrong was "I'm sorry, I won't do that again", nothing else really has to happen.
"I mostly think the argument "Well men will just start treating women and minorities will start being treated like radio active objects" is cultivated and pushed forward by men that aren't willing to hear they did something wrong."
I agree. It's a narrative from the "bad" men, yet it can instill paranoia on the good ones, where they become too careful.
Is this "walking on eggshells" thinking justified? No, I think in most interactions good intent would be detected, and occasionally a minor "correction" follows if not. None of this should be even in the domain of HR reports, job loss, the like. Like you said.
But still, despite that, I do see minor paranoia on the rise.
As in the example I gave regarding the dress. My heart was screaming to say the nice thing, the compliment she deserved so much, but I picked the safer option.
Likewise, code reviews. With a male engineer, I would simply say this: there's a mistake in your code. It's over here. Here's why it's a mistake, and what its impact would be if left unsolved. A fairly clinical and dry transfer of information.
With a female engineer, although I don't want to, I find myself to be far more careful. I aim to remove any trace or shred of a doubt of the message, or the tone of the message, coming across as in any way being dismissive, oppressive, "mansplaining", name any possible negative feeling one can have about critical feedback.
It takes me 3 times as long, and I don't know if it helps at all. But it's another example of minor paranoia straining work relations.
It's an odd thing to realize that the men concerned in the article specifically treat women in a bad way, yet at the same time normal (say, good men) might treat women too carefully.
I don't have a solution, these are just observations.
> Which sounds reasonable to me, in every context but this one. I had a strong urge to compliment her on her skill and the incredible result of her tireless effort. Surely, she worked on this forever, and this was to be a proud moment of display.
I get what you’re saying, and the context of the training would give me a warning siren in my head too (even though it is implicit that the no-no is with regard to the dress that someone is wearing), but you can complement someone’s handiwork or effort directly without using the word 'dress' — “Skilful haberdashery” is a very different tone than “nice dress”.
Although you do need to ask the person involved, as there’s no way a (male) internet stranger like me is going to read your coworkers’ mind.
Yes, those are a bit more nuanced. As noted in the sibling comment, part of this is also coming across as someone who listens when people voice their concerns.
For the dress issue, it really just depends on the context and your relationship with the person. If it's your -friend- who you actually know makes custom dresses as a hobby, why would they be upset at a (genuine) compliment? My friends who pay attention to clothes and I give out (genuine) compliments to each other all the time. With a stranger I don't do that unless it's like something that truly stands out. I've been genuinely complimented on my coats and blazers by random strangers numerous times and I think nothing of it. But social environments like bars and cafes are quite different from contexts like office environments, particularly male-dominated workplaces.
I don't know the exact reasoning about the "ethical workplace" training, but I imagine it's a blanket thing since some people just don't know how to give compliments without being creepy about it, or just use it as a proxy to hit on the person. Of course companies large enough for ethical trainings would want to play things as safe as possible. Idiots ruin things for everyone else.
Anyway, I find it hard to believe anyone would take offense at something like "hey, did you make that dress? That's awesome!". But this is also why working at a large corp is probably my least favorite option when selecting a job.
"Males would get very direct, sometimes harsh, and detailed negative feedback, whilst women would get the far less usable vague sugar-coated version of it."
This is definitely an issue and I don't really know how to deal with it other than not hiring people who would take offense at something like honest feedback. That is more of a company-level cultural issue where people are afraid to give honest feedback lest they be accused by an idiot of being <X-ist>. I don't think that culture would develop if they had higherups who they could trust to fairly evaluate the situation. Higherups who are not afraid to go "yeah, no, that's not being <X-ist>, that's just the same level of feedback everyone else gets" if that's truly the case... or higherups who reliably can go "yeah, there seems to be a discrepancy here based on gender and we should take appropriate measures".
...this is a lot of words to basically agree that sometimes edgecases require some additional pondering. Context is very important, and knowing who you're dealing with is also very important. None of this matters if you're dealing with people who assume everything is done in bad faith and you're out to get them, etc. Life is short so just say "alright", and move on. Now, if multiple people start saying similar things... then maybe it's time to do some self-reflection.
I think that sums it up nicely, and indeed was my main point.
The female engineer we've worked with on a daily basis for years, in a very friendly, cooperative and relaxed team. So very far from a stranger to us. She's one of us, basically.
I'd agree that it would be incredibly unlikely that if we did make that compliment, anything bad would happen. But the fact that all five of us shut up regardless, I find telling.
I guess it's math, in a way. If there's a 1% change of getting into trouble for trying to say this nice thing, not saying anything means the chance is 0%, so the better option.
Yes, in the case of the feedback problem with the VCs, it was actually women taking issue with the lack of real critical feedback. They wanted it, they didn't want the muddied down overly protective version.
> They wanted it, they didn't want the muddied down overly protective version
At some point it becomes an exercise in futility to try to separate (in a way that 99% of everyone will accept) honest criticism of a woman's work by a man, from "mansplaining", and that to me is the problem
First to be clear, I would never comment on anybody's body or clothes, especially not in the workplace. This is not to comply with some rule, I wouldn't have the urge to do that in the first place. It's weird and unneeded.
Anyway, the edge case. My female coworker is very passionate about making custom dresses. One day, on the day before our country's Queen's Day, she comes to work in an absolute master piece of a custom dress, dedicated to the festivities to come. The quality of that dress, the attention to detail, was out of this world. All custom made.
She walks over to a group of devs (five men, one is me) and basically presents the dress, yet without saying a word.
And now comes the awful thing. By chance, all of us had one of those mandatory "ethical workplace" trainings the day before. And this literal example, some guy commenting on a dress was used as an example of an absolute no-go.
Which sounds reasonable to me, in every context but this one. I had a strong urge to compliment her on her skill and the incredible result of her tireless effort. Surely, she worked on this forever, and this was to be a proud moment of display.
But we all kept our mouth shut, and picked the safe side of things. She left defeated, perhaps humiliated.
I know, it's a very uncommon situation, but the dynamic is interesting. In the gray zone area, most people would prefer to better be safe than sorry. Which almost every time is best anyway, but not this time.
I'll end with an aspect much more common. Feedback, as in professional feedback. Recently a study showed that VCs are far less critical towards female founders compared to male ones. Males would get very direct, sometimes harsh, and detailed negative feedback, whilst women would get the far less usable vague sugar-coated version of it.
Supposedly, out of fear. It shows hyper tensions, paranoia. If that gets out of hand, women and other minorities will be treated as radio-active objects, which is in nobody's interest.
The way I see it, really bad men (subject of article), cause this distrustful relation between perfectly good people.